Aurélia Thierrée - Courtesy Shonna's picture

Murmures des murs -

Murmures des murs -

Murmures des murs -

Murmures des murs -

Aurélia Thierrée is blessed with a kind of beauty that is delicate and old-fashioned like that typical of the protagonists of her legendary grand-father’s – Charlie Chaplin – movies whom she warns she will not talk about. Other complex conversation topics include the relationships with the mother, Victoria Chaplin, the father Jean-Baptiste Thierrée – pioneers in the 70’s of what is considered contemporary circus with their cutting-edge show, Le cirque imaginaire – and with her brother James who also inherited the family’s artistic DNA. And yet we manage to persuade her to share with us some of her childhood memories which she recounts with that same unworldly lyricism that characterizes her performances: “As a family we were constantly on the move, we spent our life travelling on a camper. The top bed was my own private kingdom: in the morning I would draw the curtains and press my face against the plastic window panes to see where we were."

Right now that Aurélia is in Turin, Italy to present her new show Murmures des murs as part of the Teatro a Corte Festival (on July 7th-8th at Teatro Astra, www.teatroacorte.it) memories become even more vivid and delightful: "I recall Italy’s beautiful theatres, the towns at night-time, i panini caldi e il latte caldo (she recounts in Italian) (hot paninis and hot milk) and the dialect changing quite dramatically from one region to the next!". Together with her youngest brother, Aurélia started performing on stage at the age of three: "a soothing, shining and beautiful light similar to that of a fireplace. And the audience, of course – a friendly mysterious presence and a vivid sensation of joy and excitement at the same time» these are her first recollections of life “under the spotlight."

Blossomed to become a mature and fully-accomplished artist, Aurélia seems to look back at those years travelling around the world with a vein of serene nostalgia in her eyes: "Travelling was never a problem because we were always together. Beside, children adjust very easily to changes. Perhaps my brother and I were not aware of how lucky we were in those days: that was our life, it was normality to us. As a teenager I started to perceive adventurous what is typically considered “normal”: living in a house, going to school, hang around with other children and teenagers. At fourteen I stopped travelling, I started going to school and...settled down for a “normal” life."

Soon her family’s artistic legacy running through her veins demanded to be listened to and shown on stage hence, Aurélia decided to rekindle with her roots and started studying those disciplines that she head learnt spontaneously while performing on stage with her parents. Her apprenticeship away from the family included the most diverse experiences: from the tour with London band, The Tiger Lillies and the performances in Berlin’s music-halls and cabarets to cameo roles in Milos Forman’s and Coline Serreau’s films. "I took classes in trapeze and juggling, studied acting, dancing and improvisation, although I cannot say I follow the classical training path: I learnt from friends, from strangers, from family relatives, from my own life experiences, at times simply observing perhaps while carrying out jobs that had nothing to do with theatre."

Both Aurélia’s Oratorio, which has been on tour around the world since 2003 very successfully, and the new Murmures des murs, are mother and daughter collaborations with Victoria Chaplin in the role of director: "I love Vicky’s work" she says about her mother "and I was beginning to miss her approach. The way she works is mysterious: she is very reserved; you cannot force her to open up and share. Then one day she is ready and she calls you up for rehearsals. Murmures de murs is a city, knocked down building and walls with a story to tell. To me working on a new show is like arriving to a new town or a new country: I start to study the language, I familiarize myself with the names of the streets until I find my own place then I can focus on exploring where and who I am. This is how I enter Vicky’s world: a world built with wood, cardboard and images, the world of her imagination, her subconscious; once I’m there I try to interpret it according to who I am, I try to make it my own. Vicky creates almost everything by herself: costumes, set design, visual effects. When performing in Aurélia’s Oratorio I used to say: she has created everything, including myself!"

So, in the end, the resistance to talk about her family and in particular about her grand-father seems to have been forgotten: "I admire him hugely. His art has influenced generations of artists, me included. As for our family, now it’s rather large: almost the population of a village! If I look at it from a certain perspective, I see it as great and a little surreal as if my relatives were fictional characters. But this doesn’t change the fact that when the curtains are raised only one thing matters: does the show work or not? All the rest is irrelevant."